This Does Not Define You

the shock
of a late-stage
cancer diagnosis
wind torn leaves holding on despite
the odds

Greetings

godspeed
lately lateness 
meets late in desolate--
attachment disorder--just say
you're fine

Chronicles

vacant 
house graffiti
the transient nature
of our entries repainted by
strangers

Casino King

Joker,
wild card, trump card,
only the dealer wins.
Game table. The earth tilting the
                                  wrong way...

A Critique of Summer

Shadows

crossing the lawn--

the cut grass retains its

greenness. Whatever's been mowed down

grows back.

November 2016

sometimes
prescriptions fail
to cure the malady
Trump wins the election since you've
gone blind

This form is similar to a butterfly cinquain except the syllable count is not reversed in the second cinquain. The closest format I could find to this example would be a cinquain swirl which can be any number of repetitions in the pattern of 2-4-6-8-2-4-6-8. I think I'll just call it a twin cinquain in that the last 2 words of the first cinquain are repeated for the first 2 lines of the second cinquain, joining both poems. It consists of two stanzas.

ELIXIRS

(A Twin Cinquain)

Flowers

petaling out

their wares. Fantastic shapes

and colors you can't live without

Each spring,

each time that jumps

forward, I remember

how you said you would leave me with

flowers.